December Film Festival

Just as a refresher, back at the beginning of the month I decided to work my way up the AFI 100 Years, 100 Movies lists (both editions), watching about five classic movies a month until I reach what should be the best movie of all time.  Well, now it’s the end of the month, and I’ve made it through the first five.  Things went remarkably well, actually, and I saw all that I had planned to.  Here are my thoughts on the first five, ranked from worst to best.

5) Unforgiven (1992) – I had already seen this, since it was given as part of a 2-pack of DVDs for a Christmas present one year.  Neither Stacia nor I liked it at all, but then I had to go and start this new list, so I had to watch it again.  Not a lot better the second time.  First, it’s a Western, which I don’t usually love, but I probably could have gotten over that.  What I couldn’t get over was how long and boring it felt, with the same things repeated over and over again.  I get that it was made to be the kind-of anti-Western, showing that it wasn’t all gunfights and excitement, but by about halfway through you are willing Clint Eastwood on to get to Big Whiskey (no joke) and start killing bad guys already.  On the plus side, some of the wild west scenery was pretty and well-photographed.  Also, there’s the possibility of a fun drinking game, taking a drink every time Clint Eastwood says, “I ain’t like that no more.”  But aside from that, I probably would never watch this again.

4) Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) – To be fair, I didn’t see this all the way through, thanks to the crappy condition of the Clive Library’s copy, and the fact that they are the only metro library to hold this movie.  What I did see seemed okay, but not spectacular.  It’s a biopic of George M. Cohan, who apparently was some sort of singing, dancing, acting entertainer-guy.  Maybe his life got more interesting down the line, but in the part I saw it was basically a recounting of his family moving to a town, performing a show, moving to a new town and repeating.  There was some nice stuff about his family supporting him (morally, not financially) and hopefully the later songs got better so they were entertaining.  It’s hard for me to judge, since I missed so much of the movie, but I didn’t really get emotionally invested in the part I did see.  I’ll probably have to try to find this again so I can feel good about crossing it off the list without an asterisk.

3) Ben-Hur (1959) – This was actually better than I thought it would be, and only ranks third because the other two were very good.  It’s over three hours long, but once I started watching, I went the whole way through, which surprised even me.  Being an epic, lots of stuff happens, from the Romans first arriving in Judea to being a galley slave to Rome back to Judea to chariot races, with a little bit of Jesus thrown in.  Since there’s so much story, you are kept hooked even though there’s not a ton of emotional depth (note that I am not religious, so ymmv).  Oh, and the chariot scene is awesome.  I know that it’s the one thing Ben-Hur is known for, and deservedly so.  It’s about 10 minutes of insane action and death-defying stunts that are essentially the thing to watch the movie for.  I’d recommend seeing the whole thing to really get the backstory as to why the chariot race is so important, but that scene is really where you get your money’s worth.

2) Toy Story (1995) – How much fun was it that Toy Story showed up on my list?  A ton, that’s how much.  I’m sure you’re familiar with this one, so I won’t needlessly bore you with plot, but let me just say that for the most part, this movie holds up very well.  Stacia and I were laughing aloud on more than one occasion at the pun-ny jokes and great sight gags.  Toy Story really defined the genre in terms of CGI movies, and also the kids movie that adults will enjoy too.  The story is clever and well-paced, with nicely distributed sentimentality and humor.  After 14 years, the CGI effects are looking a little dated; things are too shiny and the humans are just damn creepy looking.  But this is a modern classic.  I can’t imagine having kids without them seeing Toy Story sometime.

1)  Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (1967) – Top movie of the first month, and there’s a lot to like about it.  The subject matter (interracial marriage), though less shocking than in the 1960s, offers insight into prejudices and human behavior that are still pertinent today.  Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn are spectacular together, and bring their real-life love for one another to the film as caring parents faced with a difficult situation.  Sidney Poitier, in one of his early roles, exudes grace and charm as the source of the “problem.”  And the writing is great – each main character has a speech at some point in the movie that epitomizes and defines who they are.  Tracy’s in particular, at the end, is hard to watch with a dry eye, especially knowing this was his last film, and the relationship he and Hepburn had in real life makes it even more poignant.  The more I think about it, the more I like this movie, and it seems unjust that it is ranked #99.

So there they are.  The first 5 out of 123, if I remember correctly.  Already one film has made it to my mental list of movies I love, and there are certainly a lot more to go.  Here’s what I have to look forward to in January.

97(1) – Bringing Up Baby (1938)

97(2) – Blade Runner (1982)

96(1) – The Searchers (1956)

96(2) – Do the Right Thing (1989)

95(1) – Pulp Fiction (1994)

95(2) – The Last Picture Show (1971)

Belated Happy Holidays!

I'm a little late, but I hope everyone had a great Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, winter solstice, or whatever you might have been celebrating!  I was with my family, so I had way more important things to do than blog.  Best wishes for a Happy New Year!

O we will fight, fight, fight for Iowa State...

I originally intended to post this column last week sometime, but then something unexpected came up: Christmas.  I’ll try to write a real Christmas-themed column in the upcoming days, but somehow last week arrived and I came to the abrupt realization that I had less than two weeks to figure out what the heck I am doing for the holidays, do all the Christmas shopping, and get the house cleaned up so our catsitter doesn’t think we’re a bunch of slobs when she shows up.  So, imagine, if you will, that it is December 13^th instead…

December 13^th finds us in the car on Interstate 80, just east of Omaha.  There’s a duffel bag of clothes in the back, along with a cooler of Whole Foods goodies (that you may have heard about), and we are just settling in for the two hour drive back to Des Moines.  The roads are fine now, but it is still just days after the biggest snowstorm in thirty years, so there was some question as to whether conditions would be suitable for travel when we left.  So just what was it that caused this pilgrimage to Omaha?  To answer that, we have to look back further, about four years ago.

It’s a crisp fall day, or maybe it’s a blustery cold Iowa day, or perhaps even one of the freakishly hot sunny days that arbitrarily pop up in September and October here in the Midwest.  The point is, I don’t exactly remember the weather, but I do know exactly where I was.  Jack Trice stadium, with Stacia alongside, cheering and shouting (most likely in vain) for our Iowa State Cyclone football team.  Of the six years that I lived in Ames, only one was spent without season football tickets, and we made it to nearly every game.

So there we were, enjoying the cool air, or huddled together for warmth or sweating like crazy, when an announcement was made on the giant videoboard.  Anyone with a football ticket for that day was invited to the ISU volleyball game that followed at the nearby Hilton Coliseum.  Stacia was fairly excited, as she had played volleyball in high school.  I was fairly confused, as I had no idea Iowa State even had a volleyball team.  But hey, I was an open-minded college kid, so why not give it a try?

We got inside and sat down, amongst a strangely disparate crowd of older folks and frothing superfans, as well as a few students like us who looked just a bit lost.  The first set started, and I thought, hey, this is pretty exciting.  I started asking Stacia all sorts of questions about the rules, and also started getting into cheering the team on.  I can’t recall if the team won or not that day, but I remember being astounded at the athleticism needed to play this sport, and walked away having enjoyed the experience as much, if not more than the football game we’d just come from.

Over the next few years in Ames, we made it to several volleyball games a year, and gradually became more knowledgeable about the nuances of the game.  I started to grow less excited about the commercialized, big-business football team, and shifted my focus to the raw emotion and talent on the volleyball court.  We eventually moved down to Des Moines, and due to schedules and travel times, missed all but one game this season.

We did follow the team online, and knew they were pretty good, so we weren’t shocked that they made the NCAA tournament.  What was interesting was that ISU was selected to host the first and second rounds.  It was a quick consensus that since we’d hardly seen any volleyball this year that we should darn well make it to the tournament rounds.  Forty minute drives back and forth on Friday and Saturday were well worth it to see ISU decisively beat George Mason and Wichita State.  The team was on to the quarterfinal rounds.

Which were in Omaha, interestingly enough.  A short two hour drive from Des Moines.  As we drove home, relishing the win over Wichita State, the same thought occurred to the two of us: let’s just do it.  Let’s follow the team on the road, and cheer them on.  After all, they were facing Nebraska, the local favorite and a national powerhouse, so they could use the support.  Within an hour of arriving at home, we’d ordered tickets and booked a hotel on Priceline.  We were on the road to Omaha.

 Omaha was good, and also not so good.  Taking an arbitrary vacation on less than a week’s notice – good.  Getting a 4-star hotel in downtown for less than $50 a night – way good.  The smoked gouda-pale ale soup at Upstream Brewery in Omaha’s Old Market – quite good.  And being there to see the Cyclones play volleyball for the last times in 2009 was great.  Unfortunately the game didn’t go as planned, and ISU got swept by Nebraska.  But through it all, we had a blast.  We were an island of cardinal and gold in a sea of Nebraska red.  When our band played the fight song, we were the only two in our section standing and loudly singing along.  We cheered every Iowa State point and yelled encouragement until our voices were gone.  It was awesome.

Omaha was nice to us, too.  With Nebraska fans all around us and their team utterly dominating ours, they could have been mean or spiteful or even snarky, but everyone we talked to was polite.  We went to the second game of the series, where Nebraska eventually lost to Texas, and it was fun, but without a side to root for it wasn’t quite the same.  We drove home, having spent a very pleasant weekend in a nice city, and even though our team lost, we were there to let them know we had their backs.  With the 2009 season at a close, we studied our roster and saw we had a lot of returning team members, a good sign for a solid 2010.  And based on the last few games we’d seen, we vowed that we would be back for many more games in the upcoming year.

Congrats and good luck next year to the Iowa State Cyclone volleyball team!

From G's to Chefs - One Fish, Two Fish

Stacia pulled the car into a snow-piled parking spot, nosed in toward a three foot drift, shifted into park, and turned off the engine. We were now 137 miles from home, halfway across town from the reason we’d even traveled in the first place, and we were about to see one of the best things in the city of Omaha: Whole Foods.

Just inside the front door was the produce department, which left us flabbergasted. There was more variety of fruit and vegetable than we’d ever seen in one place, many of which we’d never even heard of. And there was so much of everything, with numerous employees moving along the displays removing anything that wasn’t of utmost freshness. For a time we simply wandered through, pointing at fruits and vegetables and making oohing and aahing sounds.

After a while, we made our way back to the fish counter, which was my main motivation for going in the first place. I’m very big on sustainable food, much of which is easy to come by in Iowa by shopping directly from the farm for produce or meat. However, fish is pretty darn tricky, and you’re pretty much stuck with whatever Hy-Vee carries, sustainable or not (much of it is, but they could definitely do better). Following some serious browsing and deliberation amongst ourselves, we made our selections. Tacking on some produce and grocery items, we paid and headed out.

We’d thought ahead enough to bring a cooler along for the weekend, so we packed the fish and produce on ice and started the journey back. Once home, we froze what we could, put the rest in the fridge, and made plans to start utilizing the rest that night, before it started to spoil. It was, then, no surprise when at 5 o’clock I found myself staring down four whole, fresh sardines.

I’d never even eaten a sardine before yesterday, much less cleaned one, but hey, that’s what they invented the internet for, right? I found a sufficiently graphic website illustrating the process, laid down some newspapers, grabbed a sharp paring knife, and prepared to be entirely grossed out. But you know what? Well, I won’t lie, it actually was pretty nasty. :) I won’t go into too much detail, but the general procedure was as follows.

Chop off the head, pulling away with the knife to bring along some of the guts. Slit the belly and scrape out the remaining innards. Butterfly the fish flat, grab a hold of the tail and pull on it to lift out the entire backbone. Grab the skin and pull/scrape it off the rather small remaining fillets. Finally, hand the finished fillet to a disgusted-looking wife to rinse off and lay on a plate ready for cooking. Oh, and sardines are an “oily fish,” so this is all done with a slippery fish fillet, for added fun.

Now, if that sounds disgusting, it kind of is, but I am usually the first to get grossed out or queasy from something, and I was able to do all four fish. As Stacia said, she doesn’t mind if it looks like an animal, or if it looks like food, but she doesn’t want to be involved in the conversion process. Well, I converted four sardines, and after close to an hour of cleaning, we were left with 8 tiny fillets.

The recipe we used was pretty basic, a simple homemade tomato sauce, the sardines on top, bread crumbs on that, a few herbs, and a drizzle of wine, baked in the oven. We made some pasta to serve it on as a way to stretch it, but these were sardines we’re talking about, so it didn’t make much. When the kitchen timer finally chimed, we dished up a small amount of spaghetti, placed the essentially breaded sardines on top and garnished with the sauce. We then sat down and apprehensively stared down our first-ever sardine meal.

You know what the funny thing is, after all that work? When we tasted the dish, it really wasn’t too distinctive, one way or the other. I had no idea going in if I’d like sardines, but I thought for damn sure I’d have an opinion about them. I mean, they tasted fishy, I guess, but it wasn’t like salmon, or cod where there’s a unique flavor to the meat. I was fully prepared to love or hate sardines, but I was left thinking, “well, that’s okay.” Not quite what I expected.

Naturally this makes it hard to recommend using sardines in more food. They are abundant and caught in a way that doesn’t do much damage to the environment or harm to other species, so it’s a good choice for the planet. But it’s a whole lot of work to go from whole fish to fillet to dinner, and there’s not a lot of reward, flavor-wise for all the effort. I think sardines have a bit of a stigma from years of being a poor man’s food, in the little cans, so I feel compelled to defend them a little, but like their flavor, they don’t make a strong case one way or the other.

So, what did I learn from the sardine cooking adventure? For one thing, the closest ones are in Omaha, which isn’t exactly trivial. They aren’t my new favorite food, but I won’t need to feel frightened of them in the future. And, if it’s absolutely necessary, I can clean a fish without puking. That’s something I didn’t know before. Hopefully it doesn’t come in handy too often, though.

Blizzard '09 - thrills, excitement, terror, inactivity!

I have a distinct and mildly horrifying memory from my youth imprinted on my brain that I remembered yesterday.  Don’t worry, that first line is almost entirely hyperbole, but it did leave an indelible enough mark that I can picture the entire thing even though it must have been close to two decades ago that I first saw it.  And yesterday, when blizzard ’09, the storm of the century, hit, that memory thankfully left me inside with a cup of coffee in my hand rather than outside with a shovel.  And just to be more melodramatic about it, I won’t tell what this is all about until at least halfway through the post.

People are often skeptical of meteorologists, and on Tuesday night, it didn’t look like the storm was going to be too bad.  There was snow, but not too much yet.  Well, Wednesday came, and it was all that the newscasters had claimed.  Accumulated and blowing snow had formed multiple-foot high drifts across our street.  The parking lot was impassable, blanketed by a waist-high sea of white.  The howling winds had blown a mound up to the door of our building, leaving only a narrow passage out to the garage areas.  And they weren’t done yet, throwing so much snow about that we could scarcely see across the street at times.  That, coupled with WHO’s announcement that my work was cancelled, convinced Stacia that she shouldn’t chance it, and we took a snow day.

The day was, actually pretty great.  We had plenty of food in the house, so there was no need to venture out.  We brewed a pot of shade-grown coffee, toasted up some English muffins, and wrapped ourselves under a blanket to watch mindless TV for a little while.  After a little bit of this, we started to move about – Stacia knitting as I watched an old movie, when Stacia spotted a truck stuck on our street.  We immediately went to the windows to watch.

At first we didn’t see anybody about the truck, so we ignored it, assuming it had been abandoned.  Maybe an hour later, though, two people were outside it with a snowblower, gas can and a pint of oil, apparently intending to dig themselves out.  Unfortunately, it seemed neither had used a snowblower before, because they were out there reading the instruction manual as they went, and really struggling to make any progress clearing the snow.  I felt bad for them, but I’ve never used a snowblower before, either, so I wasn’t sure there was much I could do to help.  With a little bit of sympathy, we retired from the window and made some lunch.

A few hours passed.  We checked in from the window on and off with the truck people, increasingly pityingly, but again without much we could do to assist.  Then Stacia shouted from across the condo “There’s someone coming!”  I rushed to the window in time to see a GMC Yukon barreling down the road, while the truck people fruitlessly waved their arms to warn of the huge drifts.  What followed was like something from a movie: the Yukon raced down the street, right into a four-foot snowdrift!  A giant cloud of powder blasted out and the Yukon stopped immediately.  We now had two vehicles stuck in the snow in front of our building.

As we stood there in awe, we began to wonder more if there was anything we could do to help.  We discussed it, and finally decided we couldn’t, for three reasons.  1) Everyone had been told all day not to be out traveling.  The only places these people could reasonably be headed to on our street are the mall or nearby stores, so I doubt it was any sort of emergency besides a shopping one.  2) There was no way these people were going to get out.  Maybe if it had been a little bit of snow like a normal snowstorm, they might have stood a chance.  But come on, the plows weren’t even out at this point, there were tow bans, and the cars were stuck in drifts higher than my waist.  Even if we’d tried to help, we wouldn’t get anywhere.  And 3).

3) is a movie we were forced to watch in elementary school.  Ostensibly it was a winter safety video, but it was really creepy.  The one part I remember in detail showed a kid getting out from the bus and climbing atop a drift to wave to his friends inside the bus before it pulled away.  Then the child slipped down the embankment beneath the bus, which then pulled away, not seeing him there.  It wasn’t too graphic, but geez, what a thing to show a 7-year old!  In a sense it worked, since I’ve always been careful on slick surfaces and around large vehicles, but maybe there was a less traumatic way to show it!

So when I looked out the window and saw these drivers throwing their cars rapidly from drive to reverse and back, spinning their wheels at high speeds, I wanted nothing to do with being in front or behind them pushing, in the off chance they did gain any traction.  With a little bit of a feeling that we were somehow bad people, we became gawkers instead, watching their (lack of ) progress from the safety and comfort of our condo.  The two vehicles exhibited varying degrees of dedication, but in the end, neither could get out (told you so) and they gave up to head to the mall or a hotel.

I still feel like a bit of a jerk for not helping, but all seems to have worked out.  As of this morning, the cars are out, so once the plows began to run and the winds died down, they were able to recover their vehicles.  And as we were leaving home today, a neighbor was stuck in our lovely, still unplowed lot, but in a spot with only in a few inches of snow.  We were able to push him out, since we weren’t attempting the impossible, and there was almost no chance of getting run over.  Maybe that makes up for the others, karma-wise.

So at the end of blizzard ’09, we had done as we were told: staying inside, not traveling, and you know what?  It was a great snow day.  Relaxing, warm, comfortable, and Stacia, Roxie and I got to spend a peaceful and lazy day together.  Beats being in the office anyday.

Preview - December Film Festival

I’ve always been a fan of lists.  I could write a full post about that alone, but I think I’ll mostly save it for another day.  Suffice it to say, though, that when I was little, I was the kid with the most complete, hierarchically ranked and frequently updated Christmas list.  I never outgrew this love of lists, and once I got a computer with Excel, things really blew up.  Making lists in Excel is so much fun; if someone would pay me to do that, it would probably be the perfect job for me.

Naturally I have lists pertaining to most of my pastimes, including watching old movies (And cooking, and restaurants, and books…).  At some point, I decided I wanted to watch all the classics, and happened upon the American Film Institute’s “100 Years, 100 Movies” countdown special.  I decided I’d try to watch all of the movies on that list, just by recording them whenever they happened to be on Turner Classics.  Well, then AFI decided to follow that one special up with 10 others: 100 Stars, Laughs, Thrills, Passions, Heroes/Villains, Songs, Quotes, Scores, Musicals, Cheers, 10^th Anniversary Edition of 100 Movies, and a Top 10 in 10 different categories.  Before I knew it I had a list of 479 movies to watch!

It became pretty apparent that my random recording method wouldn’t make very quick progress of the list, or ensure that I saw the best movies out there.  Sometimes I’d find myself recognizing a film name in the guide, and recording/watching it, only to find that its only claim to fame was having the 98^th best film score, or something.  While I might want to see that movie sometime, it shouldn’t take precedence over the ones that are best overall.  So I drafted a new list and started a new plan.

To begin with, I will only work on the movies from the “100 Years, 100 Movies” and “100 Years, 100 Movies, 10^th Anniversary Ed.” lists, which contain a lot of overlap, leading to a total of 123 films.  Since I am very much a save-the-best-for-last kind of guy, I plan to start at the bottom of each list and go back-and-forth, working my way up to number 1.  Obviously they won’t necessarily be on TCM when I want, so I’ll make use of the metro libraries as well.  I’m starting fresh now, so even if I’ve seen something before, I get to (or have to) watch it again.  And I’m shooting for 5 movies per month.

With all that said, here is the lineup for the December Film Festival:

100 (1) – Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

100 (2) – Ben-Hur (1959)

99 (1) – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

99 (2) – Toy Story (1995)

98 (1) – Unforgiven (1992)

98 (2) – Yankee Doodle Dandy (Already listed as 100 on list 1)

Assuming I make it through all these movies by the end of the month, I’ll post one wrap-up for the whole “Film Fest,” rather than writing a summary/review for each movie I’ve seen.  I like to write a little about what I’ve seen, but it’s fairly challenging to say too much without giving away any spoilers.  That seems more conducive to one combo post than 5 individual ones.

So, we’ll see how this goes.  Last time I started writing about movies, I got one film in before I decided to give up.  I think I like this plan better, since it has some structure to it, so it might go a little better.  However, 123 movies at a rate of 5 per month will take something like 2 years to get through entirely, so it will be a bit of a challenge.  Regardless of how it goes, I will end up getting to see some good old movies, and I got to make a new list, so I can be happy about that.

From G's to Chefs - Curried Away

I’ve never really cared for Indian food, and that has bothered me a bit lately.  I know everyone has their own likes and dislikes, but if I want to become a better cook, how will I be able to get new ideas and expand my culinary knowledge if I automatically cut out an entire subset of food?  On a broader sense, too, I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded person, yet there are a lot of foods I simply don’t think I like.  Japanese, Indian, Thai – they just never resonated with me.  Not that I am afraid of these cuisines, but I just never have been excited by them.

Part of my dislike for Indian food may be due to my first experience eating it.  My brother and sister were visiting me in Ames, and Stacia and I decided we’d take them out to eat at a unique place.  We ended up deciding on the local Indian restaurant, which was a bit of a gamble, since we’d not yet tried it ourselves.  It ended up that most of our fears were mostly unfounded, as the bulk of the food was pretty good.  I don’t know how authentic it was, but the Curry item I tried seemed decent but pretty blah - nothing to write home about one way or another.

The side dish was another story.  Not being familiar with Indian cuisine, I again don’t know how common this is, but my meal came with a side of yogurt, or “jo-gurt” as the waitress pronounced it.  It arrived in a small shallow rectangular container, vaguely reminiscent of a sardine can, and consisted of thin milky liquid with tic-tac sized chunks scattered throughout.  I decided to be brave, which I perhaps shouldn’t have been, for it was like chewing sour milk in a salt water broth.  Perhaps that’s not entirely surprising, since to a certain extent yogurt is solidified milk, but let me just say it was horribly unappetizing and put me off Indian food for a long time.

So when I was home this weekend and my Mom proposed we have Fragrant Chicken Curry, my initial reaction was less than enthusiastic.  Then I thought about how long it had been since I had decided I “didn’t like” Indian food, and realized I was being silly not to give it another shot.  So I voted we give it a try, a sentiment resoundingly echoed by my less biased siblings.  And as we got the recipe together, planned the shopping, and started cooking, I began to grow more excited about the prospect.

The recipe was incredibly simple, and turned out to be a lot of fun.  We started from a rotisserie chicken – the ones at the grocery store near the deli.  I’ve grown much less intimidated by raw meat in the past several years, so I probably could have handled using raw if that was specified.  However, I think the rotisserie chicken was a shortcut, and would make for a good option on nights when you don’t feel like doing a ton of cooking.  Most times I enjoy even rather time-intensive preparations, but there are certainly days where grabbing a pre-cooked chicken and doing just a little prep on it sounds nice.

So there we were, my sister and I, with a chicken that needed to become chicken pieces.  Time to roll up our sleeves and start literally pulling the meat off the bones.  Now, in theory you could use a fork for this job, but where’s the fun in that?  Before too long, we had reduced our chicken to a mostly bare set of bones and had a surprisingly large bowl of meat.  But we weren’t quite satisfied, and my sister in particular seemed to want to get every scrap off the carcass.  Which is where things took a turn for the macabre… ;)

As I stand there peeling small bits of meat out from between the ribs, my sister holds up what appears to be a spine and implores that I check it out.  I take a look, give an approving response and turn back to what I was doing.  Then I hear a loud crack from next to me and see that she has broken the backbone apart and is peering at a little pink strip hanging out from between the vertebrae: what can only be a section of the spinal cord.  I can’t say for sure which of us suggested that she eat it (I really don’t think it was me) but it ended up not taking much coaxing.  Correct me if I’m wrong, Karin, but I believe it was spongy and hard to chew, and I know it ended up feeling like it was caught in her throat until she had a snack a little later.  Needless to say, I didn’t try any spine.  I told you my siblings were more adventurous than me!

Lest you become frightened, let me reassure you that no spinal cord made it into the final recipe, which was quite delicious.  It was a simple mixture of some sautéed onion and garlic, a ton of curry powder with a few other spices, the chicken, and cans of coconut milk and tomatoes.  We simmered it all together for 20 minutes or so, added a little corn starch to thicken, and served it over some jasmine rice.  As the finishing touch, my Mom incredibly found a jar of mango chutney that had been in the pantry for many months, and served that alongside.  As awesome as the food was without, the mango gave it a little extra kick of sweet and spicy (great combo) to really finish the dish.

In the end the Chicken Curry really helped solidify my thoughts that I need to be more adventurous and give up some of my old inhibitions about food.  I already do that for the most part, but there are some areas where I’ve been a little obstinate.  I thought I didn’t like Indian food, but this dish was spicy yet very flavorful, with a sweet and zippy punch from the mango chutney.  The recipe used coconut milk, which I’ve always thought makes food taste weird, but it ended up making a nice creamy sauce without being overpowering.  And it was super easy to make, which I suppose I didn’t have any hangups about, but is still a good thing.

So, while I might not have eaten jo-gurt or chicken spine, I tried something I thought I disliked, and it was great.  There aren’t a lot of foods on that “don’t like” list, but it seems like a few more of them need to get another try.